ULTRA 2015: The Pre-mix. The shot heard around the world.

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
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ULTRA 2015: The Pre-mix. The shot heard around the world.

Ultra Music Festival 2015: The Pre-mix. The shot heard around the world.

Now that the Ultra Music Festival 2015 in Miami is coming to a close there are a lot of talk right now about DJ/Producers who “Pre-mix” their sets for big shows like Ultra.

This was catapulted into the spotlight on the first day of Ultra Music Festival 2015 when a hiccup caused Tiesto’s set to be interrupted by a few seconds of silence (and total darkness) to an audience of hundreds of thousands. After recuperating from the mishap, Tiesto picked up the mic and said:

“So as you guys can hear, I never do a premix. It’s all done live.”

You can watch Tiesto’s hiccup here…

Now don’t get me wrong here. Tiesto’s “live” set at the festival was good but there were many headlining acts (like Hardwell & David Guetta) that sounded better as a whole. Maybe better is not the best word to use here but others like Hardwell’s sets seemed to generally "flow” better and seemed like the tracks where glued together in a way that created more excitement in the mix. These other sets seemed….well…more produced.

I hate to say it because Tiesto is a legend and he is the reason I started DJing in the first place but from a listening perspective I enjoyed the more “Produced” sets better. So love it or hate it the “Pre-mix” is a big part of EDM these days and its here to stay. So I think there needs to be some clarification on exactly what these top DJs are doing when preparing for festivals like Ultra.

What exactly is a Pre-mix?

What is the difference between a pre-edit & pre-mix?

What exactly are these guys doing when “preparing” their set for a festival like Ultra?

Are they using their DAW to make their own edits & mashups of each track they are going to use in their set & then mixing them live?

OR

Are they simply recording their set ahead of time in their studio so if they mess up they can start over for the perfect sounding mix?

OR

Are these guys using their DAW to make edits and/or mashups of their tracks ahead of time and then gluing some tracks together to create predetermined sections (segments) and then simply mixing these sections together during the show? Using these pre-edited & pre-mixed sections the DJ only has to physically mix on the decks say every 5-6 minutes as opposed to mixing every track change every minute or so to keep the pace up during their set . Using this method, the DJ has less chance messing up and will sound better overall. More importantly, the DJ has more time to interact with the crowd instead of them staring at the top of his head the whole time.

Which is it? Which method is used the most by top DJs?

Do you pre-mix your sets sometimes? How do you do it?

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and EDM is where it can stay…

It’s not like any of the guys with an actual legacy are doing it (someone correct me if I am wrong)…

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i know most of the edm guys will warp all of their songs to a specific BPM (probably 128) and export the song as a 128 song. that way all of their songs are in the same BPM. Its like using sync but not actually using it.

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I think its been said before that these kind of shows aren’t about the intricacy of a mix or what the DJ is reading from the crowd. It’s a spectacle. A performance. Entertainment. Punters have paid to be taken into a show for a few hours to hear their favourite DJ playing the songs they want to hear.

The light and lasers are all synced up to the music much like an elaborate special effects sequence for the final fight scene in an action movie. It’s not organic. It’s been rehearsed and perfected for months. You aren’t seeing a live artist, you are seeing a scripted and on rails event.

And that’s cool. It is a good show and if that’s what people like then that’s what they’ll keep going to and it’s what makes money for the people projecting it. Unfortunately that’s the driving factor. Money, Money, Money and EDM/Dance music etc is a hot topic that’s been packaged into a digestible format for the regular going, radio listening public. Hence the above.

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I don’t think very many of them will be doing live mashups impromptu at UMF. Maybe at a small club, but that stage is way too big. They’ll be sticking to what they know works.

Tiesto’s issue doesn’t even sound like a mixing issue. Must have just bumped a button on accident.

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Anytime a a good time for a live mashup when you go to mix the next track and it just sounds so right layered over top of each other…

Last one I did like this was
Oceanlab - Satellite (Above & Beyond) layerd over Luca De Mass - Once Upon A Time

I was cueing up satellite and it just sounded so perfect over each other that I went ahead and mixed it in… It sounded so good I’m half tempted to do a legit mashup in ableton

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This argument is so overplayed. Because I don’t feel like typing out the huge message again, here’s the link to my posts on page 3 of the Krewella wireless DJM thread

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Great post. Also, seems like you have a pretty sweet job!

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Hehe! "the only stage that DJs are actually mixing on is the Resistance Stage and that was a total disaster.”

Wundgerground come with the classic lines every time!

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I’m a bit lost right at the start. why did a few seconds long power outage make him cancel the rest of the set? Not following.

Massive edit.

Don’t mind me. Just didn’t read it right.

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http://wundergroundmusic.com/tiesto-pre-records-fuck-up-in-ultra-set-to-add-authenticity/ and so it begins…

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beat me to it lol

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OK, lets backup. This thread wasn’t so much about “if” he had a pre-mix rather than “how”. How do these guys typically do pre-mix? Do the do it in a DAW? Are they simply doing re-edits of songs and then mixing them live? Or are they actually doing all their mixing before hand? This was the real purpose of this thread. I call bull shit on most of you for not really knowing what is going on. Who knows how the pre-mix really happens? Hardwell did a lot of pre-edits to the tracks he played but they were not pre-mixed. Anybody know the workflow used?

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Both of those things you mentioned are used, some will use Ableton and just lay out the the tracks in timeline mode. Others It might take a couple of try’s to get it right with real mixing, and then they use the best recording, and have the engineers generate SMTP time code from it to run the light-shows.

Dan did also mention another way of synching live mixing up with the lights, which looks pretty cool. (i believe it was in this thread or maybe another)

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the software used by visuals & lighting guru’s in the big festivals when the DJ’s are playing with Rekordbox on CDJ’s is called ProDJ Tap

http://download.eiglive.com/TC-Supply-PRODJ-TAP-V2.pdf

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@dsquareddan & 031999,

Thanks for you response.

The same thread over any other forums like the DJforums.com has become a pissing contest about if pre-mixing is right or wrong. I’m trying to get experienced DJ/Producers to discuss the typical workflow of these “Famous” DJs that are making pre-edits or pre-mixes before their big events. I don’t care to know people’s opinion on who does or does not pre-mix or if its righty or wrong. It’s apparent that these DJs are mostly Re-editing the tracks they are going to play for their set with that being called a “Pre-Mix”. I’m interested in the typical workflow for this process, software mostly used, where they get their stems, etc. Sorry I wasn’t clear enough in my original post.

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With this response I am wanting to start another thread but I’ll just keep it here. Can this ProDJ Tap software be used for smaller lighting setups at a small club, church, skating rinks, etc. If not what software do guys use for smaller venues? Anybody have experience working with ProDJ Tap or other sync software like this?

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I messaged them and they wanted like $500 a month for the license…so it’s a bit out of my price range.

For smaller venues you just do it live. VJing is a reactive art form. you have a library of visuals that you are familiar with and you try to translate what you’re hearing in the music into a visual form that’s audio reactive. a lot of VJ software can analyze the audio input to determine BPM. It’s not a 100% perfect sync, but if you’re good enough at it, it is pretty damn close that no one can tell.

For visuals, most use either Resolume, VDMX or Modul8. there’s a lot of lighting software out there too, but main one’s i’ve seen used are M-PC or LightJockey

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Yes.

Mixing beforehand.

I know.

Bullshit, he pre-mixes.

They all pre-mix, some fake it better some fake it worse.